Alpine Rehabilitation and Nursing Center

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

This facilities second most favorable area was short-term care. We awarded it a C in this category. This is basically a slightly below average grade in this area. Our short-term care scores are crucial for patients requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Our nursing score analyzes the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with residents. This facility provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure which is well below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. While this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this area. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning residents more often.

Moving on to the next category, this nursing home received a C for long-term care, which is a decent grade. Long-term care ratings are based on the nursing home's quantity of care. This includes a vast scope of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine medical services. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 92.18107 percent of its residents. This is a few points less than we were hoping for but still a decent percentage. Nevertheless, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.